Celticangel.org

Internet Librarian 2008: Day 2, Part 1

What do you know? I actually managed to catch the free breakfast this morning. There may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but here there is free breakfast. I didn’t even fall asleep in the keynote speech…but I did manage to burn my hand on my bagel. Oh, well. It helped me to wake up. (It’s a darn good thing that I’m fond of slightly burned bread. That toaster was turned up to eleven or something. Luckily a curl of smoke alerted me to the plight of my burning breakfast confection.)

This morning’s keynote speech was by Danny Sullivan on the topic of Search Engines. What did I learn? Well…mostly that Google is at the top of the heap. Don’t bother trying to knock it off its perch of King of the Hill for at least a few more years. Cuil.com is the most recent newcomer to try climbing Google’s hill, and it wasn’t well received. (I’ve been there, and I am not fond of the layout. You can check out my search on Alexander Key here.)

Apparently, the way to make a name for yourself in the Search Engine market is to go for the niche, as with Twitter Search. Choose one thing and really own it. Want some examples? (for a more thorough list try here.)

A few “Google Killerettes”:
*Urbanspoon.com - helps you find restaurants in your area. I just went on and reviewed my favorite Indian place. (Their chai is beyond fab.)
* Eventful.com - allows you to search for events in your area. I’ve just discovered that I can go see Peter Pan this coming January.
* Gasbuddy.com - lets you find cheap gas in your area. (It looks like the gas prices on my corner have gone down $.06 since I left to come to the conference.)
and
* VideoSurf.com - obviously, this tool allows you to search for videos.

The real issue with these small specific search engines is remembering about them. (Which was the one that did that thing?) Do you have a favorite wee search engine?

Once the keynote speech was over, we had a chance to go to the exhibit hall. I must admit that I displayed a remarkable lack of interest in the exhibits. Sorry folks. The two exceptions were LibraryThing (which I adore, but was so busy I couldn’t get close enough to talk to the folks.) and San Jose SLIS (a.k.a. my alma mater. It seems that they’ve figured out how to create a Ph.D. program. This intrigues me. I actually got to talk to the folks here. They gave me a pen. I love pens.) There was quite the line for the Internet Cafe, but even though my poor laptop still lurked in my room, I passed it by. I even ignored the coffee. (No. Don’t faint with shock.)

I turned resolutely for the room which contained the Learning Track…where I spent the rest of the day. (Except for a couple of breaks here and there.) I learned all kinds of things (and terribly missed having my laptop with me) but I’ll talk about all that in the next post. The important thing for me here is…

I’ve figured out how to use Twitter from my phone!
(Hey! I saw you roll your eyes.) Now I can keep everyone updated with random tweets. I’m sure you are all thrilled about this, because you want to read things like, “Lunch at the Seafood Cafe. Nice view.”

Ah. But tomorrow? Tomorrow I will have my laptop with me. If you hear the sound of a TARDIS materializing, it’s probably me. If I can get a connection (and the computer doesn’t freeze) I may even try posting during a session.

Here’s hoping for a connection.

Internet Librarian

Watching people watch the fish…

Are you ready for more?

No?

Well…come back later, then. The rest of Internet Librarian 2008 day one will be waiting for you. You others still with me? Good. Let’s move on, shall we?

Lots of Links:

From the rest of the day I mostly have a whole bunch of cool websites, etc. So, here they are. Feel free to take a break when your brain gets full. I did.

Greg Notess from Searching Conversations put me wise to:

Twitter Search. It allows you to search Twitter for keywords. For example, #il2008 will get you this. All sorts of search possibilities with this one.

And the slightly creepy Spokeo which allows you to search by a friend’s e-mail address to see things they’ve uploaded in public space. This can include Amazon.com wishlists, your profile on facebook (if you haven’t set it to private), recently uploaded pictures on flickr, etc. If you want to sign up and see what is on there about you, I recommend that you sign up for a new gmail account and use that to sign up. Still don’t think it’s a bit creepy?

This is a picture of my sister and brother (it was used as part of a surprise for a birthday party a few years back). My sister posted it on one of her social media sites, and Spokeo brought it right up. Luckily, in her case, I know that she is very careful to read the privacy settings on everything. So, she probably won’t kill me for posting this here. It just gives one pause, does it not? (Aren’t they cute?)

Right. Moving on.

Jason Clark & Tim Donahue from Search Widgets & Gadgets for Libraries told us about iGoogle. I’ve only just created mine, but it looks like there are all sorts of things you can do with it.

The engaging Steven Cohen (his presentation) offered us some Tips for Keeping Up:

(He was even ready for technical issues, quipping: “Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic. RSS feeds are neither Really Simple nor Syndicated. Discuss.”)

Apart from various Firefox extensions of coolness, there were:
WatchthatPage.com lets you know when a site has been updated.
Page2RSS allows you to get an RSS feed for sites that do not offer one.
Invisible Auctions which lets you search for misspelled auctions on eBay. You know. The ones no one is bidding on, because they can’t find them.
and
CiteBite.com which allows you to link to a certain part of a website, so you don’t have to say “Okay. Go here and scroll down halfway…” It looks like this: http://pages.citebite.com/b9l0c7b2nnfk
Now you can say “check this out.” And folks can follow the link and find the part you’re talking about highlighted.

There you are. The good parts version of the day, just like with The Princess Bride. And just think of all those travel expenses you saved.

Well, I’m off to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow. Night all!

My lovely hotel room where I lurk.

I’ve survived the first day of Internet Librarian 2008! (And now I’m hiding in my room like the hermit I am. Did you know that channel 14 is the all jellyfish channel here? Well, it is. There’s a loop of footage from the Aquarium that you may watch endlessly if you wish. It’s quite soothing, really.)

It should be noted, however, that my brain is now full. Obviously I need to dump some of that information into a post for you all. You’re so very shocked by this aren’t you?

This is my first time attending Internet Librarian, and so far I’ve been doing pretty well. Mostly. This morning I actually heard my alarm go off! Mind you, I then had to pick up the alarm clock and stare at it for a minute to figure out how to shut the thing off. I managed to get ready and out of my room even faster than anticipated…then, not knowing that the conference offers a free continental breakfast, I proceeded to eat what is probably the most expensive breakfast of my life to this point.

Also? The strawberries were terrible. Bleh. Seriously. Someone out there is likely to be haunted by the shade of my strawberry-loving grandfather for this one.

I registered, got my bag o’ stuff (another tote bag. yay!), and made it to the spot for the opening keynote speech in plenty of time. (Apparently there are folks here from 48 states, The District of Columbia, and 13 countries. At least that’s what we were told.) The keynote speech really fired me up for this conference. Howard Rheingold certainly knows his stuff. (Psst! Em, he teaches at Stanford.) He’s recently been interested in the concept of “collective action” and has written a book on Smart Mobs. Other topics in that vein that he touched on were: distributed computing (as seen with my favorite SETI@home), Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (a marketplace for Human Intelligence Tasks that is new to me), and Social Media Classroom (which I need to spend more time looking at.) And just to prove Mr. Rheingold’s coolness factor I offer you the fact that he paints his shoes.

Right now I’m hoping that he posts the slides from his presentation somewhere so that I can check out the stuff I missed. I’ve already gone and “followed” him on Twitter. I’m all Web 2.0 like that.

I noticed one other thing once the coffee finally kicked in this morning. There were so many people with laptops in the room for the keynote speech that it occasionally sounded like it was raining outside. Sadly, my laptop lurked alone in my room in all of its pink and occasionally freezing up splendor. I wasn’t missing out on too much, though, as there wasn’t a proper internet connection in the room. That’s right. No WiFi at the Internet Librarian keynote. (I hear that the situation got better in some of the other meeting rooms…but not in that one.)

After the keynote I wandered off to a presentation that bored me silly. Bad choice on my part. Suffice to say that it turns out I can stay awake for forty-five minutes at a stretch, even if my brain resolutely refuses to absorb any of a lecture, as long as I have a pen and paper with which to amuse myself.

Things got better after that…

Internet Librarian 2008, Howard Rheingold

The Pacifica Pier

I’ll bet that you’ve heard of Google Earth, but did you know about…Google Mars?

There’s a place called Dull in Perthshire, Scotland…that is anything but.

Twilight fans, did you know that there is really a place called Forks? It’s true. They even have an online tourist shop. I’m so tempted to get one of the t-shirts.